National High-Tech Crime Unit

Located in the United Kingdom. This organization conducted a survey among businesses in 2003 to determine how much money they lost from computer security breaches over the previous twelve months. The NHTCU found that security breaches cost U.K. businesses an estimated £143m during that period. The 105 businesses surveyed said there were 3,000 incidents among them. The breaches included information theft, virus attacks, and the physical loss of hardware (such as laptops).

Similar surveys have been jointly conducted in the United States by the CSI and FBI. As is the case with these annual U.S. surveys, a number of companies chose not to participate in the U.K. survey.

Moreover, as in the United States, in many cases of computer intrusions U.K. organizations believe that they have more to lose in terms of damage to their brand and customer confidence if they report the breaches to the police than if they keep quiet and have their security experts try to deal with the intrusions. This belief is the nature of the problem facing the police and businesses trying to curb system intrusions by getting a better handle on the number of intrusions and particulars on these intrusions.

For this reason, information security exploit reporting was one of the topics for discussion at the 2004 e-crime congress, organized by the NHTCU. Without accurate figures and with very few financial institutions willing to discuss the subject, affirmed the NHTCU, it is possible to present only a rough estimate of the level of electronic crime existing in the U.K. and elsewhere.

See Also: Computer; CSI/FBI Survey.